September 10, 2023 

Prelude
Lighting the Christ Candle 

Welcome and Announcements 

Called to Worship: 

O God, you are righteous
Transform us by your Word!
Your judgments are upright
Transform our hearts by your Word!
Your precepts are unforgettable
Transform our will by your Word!
Give us understanding and we will live
Re-form us, reconcile us, encourage us and guide us we pray.  Transform us by your Word! 

Hymn:  500 Open my eyes

Prayer of Adoration 

O Still Speaking God, 

throughout history and the wide world 

you have gathered people around your Word 

to instruct and inspire.  

We give thanks for all 

who have received your vision 

and shaped diverse and faithful communities 

to follow in your Way. 

 

Continue to open that vision to us, 

that we may become transformed 

by the renewing of your Word in our hearts. 

Enable us to grow in love and understanding for each other . 

Create in us, O God, clean hearts and minds, and cause us to choose to learn your ways.  

Hear us now as we confess the sins that hold us back, saying 

 

Prayer of Confession: 

God, we long to follow You, to walk in the way that You have shown us; to know Your commandments, and to practice them whole-heartedly. 

But we confess that we are easily distracted, lured away by our own interests and desires, enticed by the attitudes and practices of the world around us. 

Forgive us.  Turn our eyes away from the things that distract us from Your way—from the attitudes and behaviours that sidetrack us from our desire to know You better and follow You more closely. 

Give us a hunger for Your Word and Your ways.  Show us where true life and happiness are found—in knowing and doing Your will. Amen. 

Assurance of Pardon 

God hears our prayers and our cries and he answers the desires of our hearts. God leads us out of the darkness of the past into the bright promise of today. God teaches us that we need to know.  God gives us the power to become his most beloved children.  God fills our hearts with his love, and we are pulled into the depths of his mercy.  Let us stand strong and confident in God’s Love.  

The Peace
Passing the Peace 

Hymn:  646 Lead me Jesus 

Online: Where He Leads I'll Follow

Scripture:
Psalm 119:  33-40 P 958

Music:  Stephen Noble:  Hope of Glory

 

 

Sermon:  A student of the Lord 

Throughout our lives those who teach us hold great importance, and great power.  From our first days on earth our parents, indeed our whole family, teach us about being loved; and then how to speak, how to play, how to walk.   

Just as importantly they have taught us what behaviours are expected of us, from not throwing balls in the house, to not hitting the cat, to helping with chores and being polite.   

As we have grown, we have known teachers who have been an inspiration as they helped us make that breakthrough in a part of the curriculum that baffled us.  In our university days we have known those who taught and inspired and sometimes we, like Paul, boast about those who have taught us along the way. 

This is especially true when it comes to what we have learned about God.  From parents who taught us songs of faith, to Sunday School teachers who told us the stories of people of faith, to ministers who revealed God’s love and mercy and to all those people whose grace and compassion have been an extension of God’s love.   

 

All of this learning has prepared us to be life-long students of God.   

 

Truly God, his revelations about himself in Scripture, and the inner guidance of the Holy Spirit are the gifts we have that show us how to be all that God has created us to be. 

As students of the Lord, we have learned many essential things.  Essentials like LOVE, HOPE, PEACE, and FAITH 

LOVE:  God’s love is always here for us, no matter what is happening in our lives. 

HOPE:  We have hope for the future and each one of us is a part of that hope; this keeps us moving into the future. 

PEACE: Peace is important in the community of faith; it keeps us working together in one accord.  It is also important for us as individuals as it calms our fears and anxieties and frees us to listen for God and to trust in God’s direction. 

FAITH:  Faith brightens our lives and give us strength and when things are difficult, faith strengthens us to step into the future. 

Yet the one very important truth about our place as students in God’s kingdom is that we would have learned none of those things without a heartfelt desire to know God, learn about his ways and immerse ourselves in his word. 

 

 

As I prepared for this sermon, I learned an alarming truth about the lack of knowledge on the part of those who call themselves Christian.   

 

In the Autumn of 2010 survey done by the PEW RESEARCH CENTRE it is reported that 43% of Christians do not know what is in the Scriptures.  43 %  Most in the survey thought that “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” was one of the 10 Commandments.   

Another disturbing thing to come out of the study reveals that for most, feeling is more important than knowledge and that these are often disconnected.   

The report also revealed that Christians knew less about Christianity than Jews, Agnostics and Atheists.  

We need to take far more seriously our calling to be students of the Lord.  

 

Today we read from Psalm 119, where the Psalmists’ prayer is that God teach him, show him, lead him, and direct him.  His desire is to have God teach him and lead him.  This is how feelings become connected with God’s word.   

This same desire to know God more and more fully is expressed through out this whole Psalm.  And that is important for us to understand, because this Psalm, and all of Scripture, is how God reveals himself to us.   

When our desire is to know him and love him, then our desire is also to be taught by him how to live as faithful people.   

In this Psalm we see that there is no division between knowledge, discipline and faith.   

 

The commentator Howard points out that, “keeping the Law goes hand in hand with learning the Law”.  He also writes that, “the disciplined engagement of religious Law is our foremost spiritual fulfillment.”  

Our foremost spiritual fulfillment. 

Spiritual fulfillment comes from knowing and walking in God’s way. 

 

In this portion of the Psalm that we read today, the Psalmist shows us that it is important to request, maybe even demand, that God teach us.  This is, after all, God’s desire, that we grow daily in the knowledge and love that he gives to us. 

 

So, in these verses we read a series of imperatives, or demands, that the psalmist boldly makes of God. 

TEACH ME. 

GIVE ME UNDERSTANDING. 

TURN MY HEART TO YOU. 

TURN MY EYES TO YOU. 

CONFIRM YOUR PROMISE. 

TURN AWAY MY DISGRACE. 

GIVE ME LIFE. 

 

Have you noticed that the Psalmist is demanding that God gives him, exactly what God desires us to have?  

When we ask God to reveal his will, he gladly gives us his will. 

When we ask God to teach us his commands, he teaches us his commands in many ways;  

stories,  

sayings,  

accounts of faithful people,  

the words and actions of Jesus and the prophets  

and the letters to the churches.   

When we read Scripture, we see God’s will revealed over and over again. 

 

In Scripture we also see the repeated patterns of God’s desire that we follow him, give him our heart, open our eyes.    

 

Again and again God grieves our distance from him, as he begs and pleads for us to return to him and his way. 

Over and over God shows us how to confess our sins and leave our disgrace at the foot of the cross, as he invites us to be his beloved children. 

God’s word is a constant revelation that he wants us to have life, not just life, but a life that is full and rich, guided in faith, and overflowing with grace and mercy.  God wants us to know how much he loves us.  

 

It would seem to me, then, that our desire to know God needs to be in line with his desire to know us.  That is what the Psalmist shows us with his impassioned pleas that God be with him, guide him, teach him and direct him.   

Our calling and our desire therefore, is to be immersed in God and God’s word.  That is the only way for God to be our teacher, leader and guide.  When we are immersed in God, he gives us understanding and life.   

 

This passage, and indeed this whole Psalm, is a sign of a disciplined seeking for God and knowing God. 

This Psalm is an acrostic poem, and that is important because of the discipline involved in writing it. Here each section is devoted to and begins with a letter of the alphabet.  Basically from aleph to nun or Alpha to Omega, or simply A to Z. 

The verses that we read today all begin with a verb that starts with the letter heh.  The heh verbs convey a sense of causality.   

I know that can seem difficult to understand.  What it means is that the Heh verbs change the depth of what the verb means and how God lives in it. 

For example the verb “to know” would become “to cause me to know”,  or “to cause me to be informed”.    There is knowing and there is that deep inner knowing.  That causuality of the Heh verb takes it to a much deeper level.   

When we look back at this list of imperative verbs, we see that depth in what they will do in the heart of the believer through God’s actions.   

“to march” becomes “lead me” 

When we talk about the revelation of God being in all Scripture, we can see how important it is to desire God to lead us. 

Think about the verb, to lead.  In Scripture we read “Lead me in your path of righteousness for I delight in it.”  It is like taking a child by the hand to safely lead them as you walk together, as they chatter, laugh and giggle, just happy to be with us.  

More than that, there is a depth in God’s leading that calls forth from us a response.   

We get a glimpse in this Psalm about this truth of God’s revelation and our response.   

The commentator Hoezee points out that this is why the Law is called gorgeous. 

Not a burden; but gorgeous, beautiful, elegant.   

The Law is a source of joy and delight.   

The Law is a path that leads us to a joyful, flourishing life.  

 The Law is the path to true peace.   

 

This is crucial for us to remember because we are a people who are prone to sinning.  Even with the best of intentions, we often act in ways that show our struggle with knowing the right and doing the wrong.  Hoezee calls it the life long tug of war between God’s way and our ways. 

Fred Craddock writes that all of us are perpetually being crucified between the sky of our best intentions and the earthly reality of everyday life.   

Or as Paul points out:  the good that I would do I cannot do. 

 

For that reason, our passion and desire to be in God’s presence compels us to confess our sins and this is why we always are asking God to help us, to teach us, to guide us, to direct us, to examine us and to remove disgrace from us.   

The Psalmist’s prayer is:   Preserve my life. 

This is the prayer of the one who “gets” that we need to rely on God, and God alone. 

 

In all of our life as we seek to walk with God, we have hope that we will discover the path to joy which is found in the grace of Jesus, and in the loving guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

This Psalm teaches us that the Law leads us to the knowledge of God AND to knowing that we need God.  

  

WE walk in this knowledge and this hope. 

The hymn the Hope of Glory, which we listened to earlier this morning, reminds us of that teaching in Colossians and Ephesians  that God is the hope of Glory. 

Listen again to the words of that hymn: 

My heart will flee to him
My soul will soar to him
I long for Christ, the hope of glory
my heart will soar to him
my soul wants more of him
I long for Christ, the hope of glory. 

May your heart always lead you to God, who will fill you with the desire to learn more and know more of him and confirm to you that  you are held in the grace of Jesus, who is the hope of Glory.   

Amen 

 

 

 

Hymn:  767 Lord speak to me

Offering and Offertory
Doxology 830

Offertory Prayer 

 

Gathering Prayer Requests 
Prayers of the People and the Lord’s Prayer 

WE have called upon you to teach us and show us your way.  In response O Lord, we promise to live for you in this world, to sing your praises in witness of your goodness.  We promise to see to follow your goals and to be generous with your gifts.  In this world: kingdom living. 

Hear now the thanks we bring you, for your mercies in our lives and the lives of those whom we love. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hear our prayers for the needs of your people. 

Those who are sick and waiting surgery
Helga
Maye
Shirley 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hear our prayers for the need of your world. 

Fires in Canada:  
evacuees
those returning home
those who have no home to return to 

 

 

Morocco:  earthquake
Greece, flooding
Ukraine continued conflict
agreement among nations on how best to help them 

 

 

Search our hearts O God, and see the gifts we bring, of wealth, love, praise and service that changes hearts and reconciles your world.
Amen. 

Hymn:  440 For all the love 

Online: Thou whose almighty Word

Charge and Benediction 

God is the eternal light that shines in our hearts.
God is the eternal grace that delivers us from evil.
God is the eternal power that strengthens our hearts to walk in his way.
God is the eternal wisdom that illuminates his way in the darkness. 

God is our companion on the way and fills us with the knowledge and passion to serve him with heart and mind and soul, that we may show his grace to all whom we encounter.   

May the glory of God, the mercy of Jesus and the guidance of the Holy Spirit be with us each day and through eternity.   

Sung Blessing  

Go now in Peace.

Three Fold Amen